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Should You Share Your Research on Academia.edu?

Academia.edu’s motto, “share research,” may sound like a godsend to scholars who want to do everything possible to make sure their work echoes far beyond the ivory tower. The pared-down social network lets users connect with colleagues, post their own publications, and track the readership of their work—all without having to dig through photographs of people’s cats and reactions to whatever is on TV.

Academia.edu. Flickr/Rob Enslin

It’s a message with resonance, as the site’s growth bears out. More than 7 million people have created academic profiles on the site, says Richard Price, the company’s founder and CEO, with more than 800,000 joining each month.

“Around 25 percent come back each month,” he says, “which is a return rate comparable to Twitter’s.”

But the appeal of that motto is precisely what worries publishers like Elsevier, the self-declared “leading provider of science and health information.” Read the rest of the article in the Chronicle of Higher Education site Vitae.